MUSIC SCENE: Guster keeps on rocking

Friday

Jan 6, 2017 at 6:00 AM

Guster, with eight studio albums under their belts and a worldwide fan base, is celebrating its 25th year.

By Jay N. Miller/For The Patriot Ledger

Freshman Wilderness Orientation, no doubt, does not rank among the typical or recommended places to start a rock band. But for three Tufts students with disparate musical tastes, it was a watershed moment. It certainly has to be one of the most improbable origin stories, but since Guster is celebrating its 25th year, with eight studio albums under their belts, and a worldwide fan base, that few days in the woods is something Ryan Miller, Adam Gardner and Brian Rosenworcel can never forget.

Guster is marking its 25th anniversary with four straight shows at the Paradise Rock Club in Boston, starting January 12, and running through January 15, Thursday through Sunday.

“It sounds much more exotic than it really was,” Miller, 44, laughed about that 1991 meeting, on the phone from his Vermont home. “Mainly it was a way for freshmen away from home, and in the city for the first time, to go camping for three days and mitigate their fears. What we all had in common among the three of us was a joy in making music. It’s not like I was a band guy, for instance, or didn’t have any ideas – I probably had lots of dumb ideas about what we could do.”

“My musical background was pretty limited,” Miller, a Texas native, added. “I liked stuff like The New Order or The Smiths. Those other two guys were into classic rock, so it wasn’t like there was a lot of material we had in common, not like we could play our favorite songs together right away. But we did decide to start a band, and since we couldn’t agree on covers to do, we started writing our own songs right away. We began playing around campus in a few weeks, they liked us, and we were able to establish our own tunes pretty quickly. Before long we were making enough money to make the band our job during college.”

By 1995, Guster – all juniors by then – was releasing their debut album, “Parachute.” That kept their momentum going, and they were getting more and more popular on the New England college circuit. But it was their third album in 1999, “Lost and Gone Forever,” that really catapulted them into the national scene with the singles “Barrel of a Gun” and “Fa-Fa.” By 2003, when the hit single “Amsterdam” seemed to be on every radio, and their third album, “Keep It Together” also yielded the popular cut “Homecoming King,” Guster was touring nationally, often headlining arenas.

“We all had a lot of interests, so it was always kind of tough finding time for the band in college,” said Miller. “By our junior year, with the first record out, we started to see people from all over New England coming to hear us play. We still stayed basically in the New Hampshire to Boston corridor then. But at some point, we played at Miami of Ohio, where they knew our songs, and loved our music, even though at that point we’d never gotten much radio. We were still staying at people’s houses on the road, but when we saw that enthusiasm among our crowds, we figured we could use that to our advantage.”

By 1999, and that third album, Guster was cracking the tough New York City market. Each successive album was doing better, airplay was improving, and, with the threesome all graduated from Tufts, they could and did tour relentlessly. A tune here and there popped up in a movie or TV show, and Guster’s audience was nationwide and growing.

“We never really had a moment where we all went “Oh, we’re making it!” Miller explained. “Everything that has happened for us has been the result of slow, methodical kind of ‘keep on doing it’ attitude. So we continued giving it a try. By 2003 there seemed to be a cluster of jambands that became really popular around that time, and so that was something we wanted to try and follow, so we began playing around the country more and more.”

Guster’s sound has always been unique, which no doubt led to their popularity – their sound was their signature, an acoustic-based rock, sweet vocal harmonies, with quirky lyrics that were impressionistic vignettes with little windows of passion hidden inside them. With Miller on guitar, bass and banjo, Gardner on guitar, keyboards, and bass, and Rosenworcel on percussion, and often not anything close to a full drum set, Guster offered a sort of alternative folk-rock.

“I think we all looked at this like I did, if I can be an artist the main question was whether I could make a living at it,” said Miller. “Back in ‘97 our first manager was an accountant, and we funded our own first album. But our records gave people something they could hold onto, and that helped. Soon after that, we found a record label that was just starting, and were able to make our records on a more professional level.”

Guster has sought to make each new record a step ahead, or a step in a new direction. That has led to some re-configuration, so that the core trio is now a quartet. Multi-instrumentalist Joe Pisapia joined Guster in 2004, and was a member until 2010 when he left to devote fulltime to his work in k.d. lang’s band. Luke Reynolds has taken over as the fourth member, playing a passel of instruments. Some new angles added to their sound have charmed some of their original fans, and lost others. The most recent Guster album is 2015’s “Evermotion,” produced by Richard Swift of The Shins.

“We have eight albums now, and each one has been slightly different from the ones before it,” noted Miller. “A lot of things have changed in our sonic approach, but the basis is still pop songs and strong melodies. There have been a lot of changes in our arrangements. With every record, we seem to lose some people who don’t like the new feel, and gain some people who do like it. We started as a trio, but over the last 10 years, we decided that another set of hands would be good for all of us, so we have four members onstage now. Luke has taken our sound in a new direction, and Dave, our drum tech, can also play drums, so sometimes you’ll even see five of us. But we’ve been pretty consistent with the quartet lineup over the past 10 years.”

Producer Swift is best known for his playing with The Shins, and also the Black Keys, and Guster wanted his input to make their latest album another new slant. It was recorded in Swift’s Oregon studio, and features a more sweeping sound, with those guitars shifted a bit to the background amid keyboards and surging rhythms.

“The main thing about wanting to work with Richard Swift is that he’s been a part of some pretty big pop records,” said Miller. “We want to be the kind of band that is constantly reinventing ourselves, and dedicated to trying to grow, and Richard helped bring us into new territory with this last record.”

But for next week’s big soirees at The Paradise – still the signature Beantown rock club as it was in ‘91 when the Tufts guys started – the question is, what to play? There are some hits fans need to hear, but some of the Guster faithful will be attending more than one show, so there will be four distinct setlists. No doubt, some lesser known album cuts will be dusted off for the first time in years.

“These Paradise shows are pretty special to us,” Miller admitted. “We always have a mix of material in our shows, and we acknowledge the relationship people have to some of the old records, so we will play music from those. But we also have new music we’re making too. We’ve never been prone to doing oldies shows, but we still know what we, as concert fans, would like to hear when we see a band like Guster. Judging from the ticket sales, a lot of people are coming to more than one show – a lot are coming to all four in fact. That will be fun, allowing us to go pretty deep into our catalog. We’ll definitely go back and pull out stuff we haven’t done in ... well, forever.

“We’ve had to go back and study on some of that old music,” Miller said, laughing. “The new guy in the band was 9 years old when we started, so we had to bring him up to speed. But we’re all up to the challenge. We have an old song we played recently, and we finished and all stood back and said ‘Wow, that’s the best we ever played that one.’ And it’s a 22-year old song.”

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